The present invention relates to a skate and more particularly to a convertible skate for which the operative blade or wheel assembly is easily removable and/or interchangeable.
Skates, both ice and roller, have long been popular recreational devices. Such skates generally include an operative portion, i.e. an ice blade or a wheel assembly which enables the skater to glide upon a supporting surface such as ice or sidewalk, and a shoe or boot fitted to the person who is to wear the skates, which mounts the operative portion on each foot of the skater. Typically, the operative portion of the skate, i.e. the ice blade or the wheel assembly, is permanently fastened to the bottom or sole of the shoe or boot. With both ice skates and roller skates the shoe or boot serves the same function, however, the operative portion must be different depending upon whether one is skating on ice or another surface not suitable for ice blades. Therefore, separate skates have generally been required for ice skating and for roller skating.
Convertible skates have, however, been designed which afford the selective attachment of either an ice blade or a wheel assembly to the same boot in order to eliminate the requirement and expense for separate shoe portions for each different operative portion, e.g., separate ice and roller skates. Such a convertible skate is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,295. Although this skate does provide for the interchange between an ice blade and wheels, it does so with a configuration that is dimensionally fixed, i.e., the skate utilizes fixed projections on the operative portion which are spaced a predetermined distance to match spaced and cooperating recesses on the sole of the shoe. These recesses within the sole are located underneath and toe and the heel of the shoe. Thus the positioning of the recesses is fixed, with the distance between the recesses being determined by the shoe size. In addition to attaching the operative portion to the shoe, these cooperating projections and recesses also establish and fix the position of the operative portion with respect to the shoe. This is a problem with U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,295 skate since the positioning of the operative portion with respect to the skater becomes dependent upon the shoe size rather than upon the skating requirements for the skater. If it is desired to change the relative positioning between the operative portion and the skater, the U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,295 skate would seemingly require a different shoe size. For a given skater this fixed configuration skate does not permit any realistic variance in the positioning or configuration of the operative portion with respect to the shoe. It has however been determined that the positioning of the wheels and/or blade with respect to the shoe is extremely critical for the optimum performance of the skate, thus this fixed positioning of U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,295 skate poses a definite impediment.